MELL LAZARUS has died ( a few days back) . At 89 .
He was best-known for the long-running newspaper strips MOMMA and MISS PEACH .
He did do comic-book earlier in his career ~ and indeed , his experience working at Al Capp-owned Toby Press provided fodder for a non-comics novel he wrote , and I read long ago , titled THE BOSS IS CRAZY , TOO ~ It was set at a comic book publishing company , but , before you get too excited (Yeah , right...) , I'll mention that , from my decades-later memory , (though a good novel) there were no " comics biz " details , it could have been set at an ad agency or any other art/graphics business enterprise .
Anyway , somewhere Momma Hobbs is weeping , not nagging (Would a presumed Jewish mother name one of her kids after a Christian saint , Francis , by the way ? Maybe .) , and Miss Peach has hung up black bunting.........
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Ah, shame, I remember liking his stuff when I was a kid.
...Supposedly Momma was still in about 400 papers , IIRC the NYT obit .
Looking at strips from April and May, based upon the copyright markings many of them were reprints from 2005. The ones without this notation are presumably new strips. I wonder if they will continue (like with Peanuts) to reprint old strips.
Haven't seen a Miss Peach in years, although I can still access Momma online.
Any idea if the strips will continue, even if it is just in rerun mode?
I have the Lazarus paperback. Good read, even if there isn't any "insider" tidbits.
He died on May 24, one week ago today.
According to Wikipedia, Miss Peach ended in 2002.
Found a nice obituary with a lot more information in the New York Times.
Obituary
...Thank you , that's where I first saw that he had died , in a paper Times .
Richard Willis said:
I grew up reading Miss Peach and Momma in my hometown newspapers.
Despite the very simple linework Mell Lazarus employed on these strips, from time to time he was a ghost artist for Steve Canyon!
...Huh .
ClarkKent_DC said: